Another amazing day. You really don't appreciate nice weather until you have to deal with a bunch of crappy weather. It's 76F, the sun is out, humidity is low. Probably should have gone to the driving range today, but now that I'm cleaned up after working in the yard and sitting on the patio with a glass of wine, it's unlikely I'll be going anywhere until work tomorrow.

Yesterday the woman wanted to go on the NC Art Walk at the museum. It's a 2-3 mile loop with a bunch of outdoor sculptures and whatnot. The facility is really nice, they let you bike around, there are huge grass areas to play on and an amphitheatre and outdoor movie screen. There was a wedding being setup when we were there so part of the amphitheatre was closed off but otherwise we had the run of the place. We didn't see all of the sculptures and they have some interactive stuff we skipped so there will be something still to see if/when we take visitors there. Probably a good thing for the parents to do, and the inside parts of the museum will be good on a cold day. Some pictures here, more linked off the main page.

The microgreens are almost at the harvest stage, probably Tuesday and they'll be ready to cut.

First project of the day was to screen in the "vents" in the gazebo roof. The stray cat likes to climb up the 4x4 posts and sleep up inside the roof. That's not a big deal, but we've noticed that the cat is starting to show signs of age and is having trouble getting up there. Sleeping up there is fine... potentially dying up there is not so good. The woman is going to make a cat house for it again like she did last winter so it's got somewhere to sleep other than the barn. Rather than the box and blanket idea from last year she's going to go get one of those styrofoam coolers at walmart (they're like $5 now) and flip it over and cut a hole in the side. Waterproof and insulated, just what you want in a cat house.

Built another wood holder thingy after the screen project and stacked up another row of firewood. I just realised I forgot to put the rest of the wood back onto the scrap stack in the back.... it's going to have to sit until next weekend as I'm not motivated to go back there and clean it up. You can't see it because it's behind the main barn so hopefully the woman won't notice and send me out there. :)

We marked the trees we'll cut down to make the mushroom logs in the spring, the woman was worried we wouldn't be able to tell the sweet gum trees from the "good" trees in the winter without the leaves on them so wanted to get them identified now.

On a "Capital Solutions Financial Products" call for a customer. Boring. Glad I can do other stuff while our finance chick does all the work.

Went for a walk the other day and snagged a good sunset picture through the trees which makes a nice screen background for the rotation.

The microgreens we got on the farm tour last weekend sprouted and are starting to grow. This picture is a few days old at this point so we're hoping they'll be ready to harvest in just another week or so. The woman pointed out that we should put some of these seeds in the prepping supplies so if we're stuck eating canned/dried crap for a few weeks we could actually have some fresh sprouts to put on things. She likes some parts of my prepping nonsense.

Tuesday I got a bit banged up in class when a guy got out of control and started actually hitting people (or me anyway). The first time I figured it was just an accident because those things happen and you just move on. The second time he actually kneed me in the face (nose isn't broken but it was bleeding and is really, really sore days later) and punched me in the back of the head. I called him out on it (in a most unfriendly way the 2nd time he did it) and I doubt I'll be working with that guy again if at all possible. The instructor said he's got a history of that, it's not the first time he's lost control. The guy needs to pull that crap with Chet (my usual partner) who will just beat the shit out of him. Chet is really a good guy until you piss him off. :)

The woman found the uncooked tortillas!!!! Costco is carrying them here now! Woo! Woo!

We went to "The Pig" for lunch yesterday so the woman could get her Vietnamese pork cheek sandwich. I'll admit it was pretty tasty, possibly better than my fried bologna sandwich with orange slaw.

Yesterday and today was "open farm days" sorta like the "tour de coop" from a few months back but this time it was local mini farmers. We visited several farms so the woman could pet goats, chickens, ducks, donkeys, cows, etc. She mostly just played with everything while I looked to see how they built the fences to keep all the various critters in.

We also saw how they grow some mushrooms on logs, and got a micro greens kit and are trying to grown popcorn shoots in the house. The taste is hard to describe, but we know they're going to be awesome in tuna salad sandwiches.

Before farm touring today I wanted to try out this idea I found on the net for a cheapie wood holder (first pic). Oddly I had everything needed, old boards, some old fence posts, and a collection of cinder blocks. I had to notch the boards because they're too wide but otherwise it worked OK. If this prototype stays together for a bit I'll build 3 more to finish stacking all the wood.

On the ammo stacking front we went by FG&G again on the way back from the farm tour and I picked up a few more cans so I could clear more shelves off. These cans represent 90% of the handgun and carbine ammo, with just some straggler boxes still on the shelves. The woman wanted to know what the two little cans next to the pile were for. Those are the "shooting ammo" that I'll actually use at the range. The rest is "hording ammo"... I'm leaving the rifle and shotgun stuff alone since those boxes aren't as dense and don't collapse the shelves as readily.

Oddly FG&G also had some "lil gun" powder in stock so I snagged a can in case I want to load some 300BLK rounds. Bass Pro (we stopped on the way back from the farms yesterday since we were way north of town and driving right by) had some shotgun powder and primers so I picked those up too. With prices they way there are I think it's actually cheaper to buy ammo now than to reload it. Sad.

I went to another of the "self defence practice nights" at the local range and since it's supposed to be geared toward your actual cary gun I decided to use the PM9 and the belly band holster since I've been wearing it more than anything now. The instructor was not too sure about the holster saying that it was "too deep" and would really limit how fast I could draw and engage. Through the night it proved to be about 0.25-0.5 seconds slower than everyone else who were wearing OWB strong side holsters and firing full sized guns. Are these people really carrying that way? Seems like no to me, or at least not all the time. They're so obviously trying to hide a gun. I just look like a normal doofus walking around which is exactly the point. Concealed.

The other thing that slows me down compared to everyone else is that I can't hear the timer; the buzzer is right in my dead zone. So, instead of reacting to the sound like they do, when I'm on the clock the instructor would either tap me on the shoulder after the buzzer sounds or hit me with a piece of brass (on those occasions were you had to be waling around or otherwise not standing right by the timer). I'm not sure how much reaction time that adds, he has to react and move and then I have to react on top of that but it's what I'm thinking causes those 0.5 second delays. Buzzer, his reaction, brass flight time to hit me, my reaction. Gotta add up over time.

The PM9 ran really well, my hits were good, recoil on that thing is so light (vs. the XDs in .45) you can just mag dump all you want in total control and it's still somewhat easy to manage administratively. There was one issue, and I can't tell if it was the gun or my brain. I'm used to 5+1 on the XDs, the PM9 is 6+1 with the flush mag. In one drill I fired 3 and 3 and went to move and shoot and I swear the gun went *CLICK* instead of *BANG* and I immediately did a rack-tap which tossed out that 7th round and locked the slide at which point I reloaded (had cover) and re-engaged. The instructor wanted to know why I tossed the live round. So do I. Did it really go *CLICK*? There was no primer strike at all on the round and it fired fine when I tried it. Or... did my brain just assume that the gun should have been empty and locked back and decided to fix it? Was I subconsciously counting rounds and expecting 6 shots?

The range is hiring too. Hey, I've always wanted to work in a gun store...

I had a business minor?

Haven't been this busy at work since I started here in RTP. Not sure what to make of actually having to put in full days and respond to email off hours...

Now we're not only feeding the squirrels (peanuts from Costco, no animal grade crap for the woman's outdoor pets) but collecting acorns for them too. On our walk today she had to gather up any acorns in our path to add to the feed bin, wouldn't want the rodents to have to actually collect their own food...

I didn't get to the range (got lazy) but I did fire 2 rounds out of the anti-snake gun just in the yard to see how it patterns. At 10' it makes a pattern slightly over 2' wide. That's freakin' huge, and should make blasting a snake pretty easy. Both the #9 and #6 shot patterned about the same, so I've loaded it with the #6 while working in the yard. Carried it around on my belt while running the chainsaw today dealing with that down tree. The woman thinks I'm crazy; she may be right.

10 doves at once, all sitting under the feeder just having a great old time. Huh.

I started organising downstairs to try to make room for our prepping supplies, and rather than trying to make really strong shelves to hold the ammo in the density I want to stack it I've decided to just use ammo cans. They're designed to stack with ammo in them, so I figure why fight it and just move as much as I can into the cans regardless of weight. I picked up 6 more cans at FG&G today, and emptied out some of the ones that didn't have heavy ammo in them (mostly the 17 HMR) and then started taking ammo out of the factory 50 round boxes and dumping it into the cans. You can get 2000 rounds of 9mm and about 1250 rounds of .45 in a can. I now have all of the pistol ammo out of the individual boxes and bulk packed into cans... and the woman helped me sort out the cardboard from the plastic for the recycling. She looks a little crazed there, maybe it's lead poisoning.

I used to think I had a lot of ammo, but now with it compressed down into cans it just doesn't look like all that much. I still have the Federal Match 308 ammo in the original boxes, and some left over 5.56 but otherwise we're out of cardboard except for the shotgun stuff.

We went over to Heather and Jesse's last night and made pizzas on the grill. The woman spent part of the day making up fresh dough and sauce (using the good tomatoes) but I'm not sure they noticed. Not foodies. It was a little humid out so the dough was not drying like I wanted and got stuck a few times, but fortunately I did the kids pizzas first and they wouldn't know that they're not supposed to be those random shapes.

The leftovers made for a good breakfast. :)

Picked up some 410 ammo for the new toy, and the woman's pets are all over the boxes. Wonder what that means? :)

That big dead tree that we always thought would fall into the pond... yep. Wind knocked it down while I was gone. Sigh. I really wish I had the Jeep here with the winch, would make stuff like this easier.

Also, sometime this month marks the 51th birthday of my pencil. I stole this from my dad's college drafting kit when I was a kid to use with my D&D stuff and I've been using it ever since. All through high school, college and today. Not in bad shape for a 1963 drafting pencil. They really did build them better in the old days.

Flew to LAX Monday to do a customer visit in Irvine on Tuesday. It's not one of my customers, but rather an EDA shop that they wanted some help with. Since our "real" EDA guy is gone they pulled me in as a 2nd tier expert. I'll take that. :) We met with their VP, director and manager of IT at the same time and went over issues and I actually impressed them with my ability to deal with the technical and managerial and political issues they brought up. Feedback from the rep was that people who weren't in the meeting were still impressed with what I presented to those who were in the meeting and were upset about missing it. Damn. I'll probably have to do some follow-up on the phone/WebEx, it's unlikely they'll fly me back out again for these guys no matter how much they liked it.

I rented a car one-way from LAX to SNA because it was about $500 cheaper to fly in one airport and out the other. Since I still have exec level with National I snagged a grey Prius as my rental. The rental had 15k miles on it and a lot of stains on the seats. Apparently people who rent Priuii aren't any cleaner and are perhaps less mindful than regular people (entitled breeders is my guess). Anyway, I was worried that the MPG was so low when I started out, I reset the trip meter and for the first 8 miles or so it was only 24 mpg. Whoa. Once I got out on 405 headed south for 30 miles or so and got into Irvine and drove around a bit I got it up to 50 mpg, not the 54 mpg I get but not bad. My 4-runner got about 10-15% mpg boost in NC, and I suspect it's just due to more time spent at ~45 mph.

I had asked the foo guys for ideas of things to do while in LAX for an afternoon but didn't end up doing anything really. I half thought of doing a movie studio tour but in the end I just don't care that much about movies.

Today has all been a "health care boot camp" at work; been in this chair for a long ass time today and really ready to go home. Got home too late yesterday for class, can't go tonight either so I'm feeling a little unhappy about the lack of exercise in the last few days.

I've said they're dumb, and now I have one. With the snakes in the yard and the unavailability of snake shot for the .357s I decided to up my game and trade one of the 357s in for something more anti-snake. This guy shoots .410 shotgun shells so that should work just fine at close range on snakes and whatnot. It also shoots 45LC which is kinda useless for me, and .45 ACP which is my primary caliber so it made it an easy decision to get the S&W over the Taurus. The Taurus holds 1 less round but takes 3" shells, so maybe it's better in that way since I have a crap ton of .410 3", but really how much am I going to shoot it vs. just carry it around the yard?

The deer leave no corn behind for the rodents and/or the bunny so I built this out of some scrap. Hopefully the deer just leave it alone and don't figure out they can just tip it over to get the corn out.

Nothing like driving a Prius to Starbucks to make you feel like a hipster douche on a Thursday, or any day really. I've got a customer meeting up the road at 10am and it's just easier to hit Starbucks early and sit here vs. trying to sit at the office and judge travel time. I spend 10x the time in the office that the other SEs do so I must be doing something wrong.

Monday was the opening of dove season and Jesse and I went down to that farm I scouted last months for their opening day event. I actually went down Sunday night and camped in our shooting spot; there were 150 hunters coming in and we wanted to at least get a half way decent spot. There were actually several other people camping in the general area and 4 guys scouting around on Sunday so there were some people for me to socialise with a bit before we all went our separate ways and staked out our spots.

The hunt itself was OK, I only got 3 birds, Jesse got 7 (but only got 6 because someone else contested one of his saying they hit it first; he let them have it). I had more fun walking the ridge line behind where we were looking for birds than standing in the field, but standing it the field is obviously the more effective method. Part of the hunt price was a huge BBQ lunch at the farmhouse, so around 11am we packed up and headed over and checked out the spread. They had whole pigs roasting for ribs and pulled pork, chicken, and a ton of sides including hush puppies. The cook had been camping there all night as well working on the meal, some said he was complaining that we should have done a dinner because he had to work all night to make it in time for lunch. Dove hunting is all about getting up before dawn, can't change that around just to make life easy for the cook crew.

I must be getting old or soft in the head, I didn't take pics of the birds or of my gun in the field (used the Browning, first time it's been actually used for anything other than clays/trap/skeet... could have scratched it or something!).

The deer don't even really run away anymore when the woman goes out to reload the feeder and whatnot. She can get them to come up to the porch when she's throwing them melon rinds but usually they run away when she walks down. Apparently not so much anymore.

Tuesday afternoon I was at the house and it started raining, a lot. .84" fell in 45 minutes and then it stopped. 8 miles away at Krav class the ground wasn't even wet and they hadn't seen any rain or lightning or anything that we had in the south. At one point it was pouring and sunny at the same time, so the clouds must have been really really localised.